Verizon and Motorola Introduce the Droid Mini “Compact without Compromise”

Today, Verizon is announcing three new ‘Droid’ phones for their lineup. This time they are all coming from Motorola. There’s the Droid Ultra, Droid Maxx and Droid Mini. We’re going to be talking specifically about the Droid Mini in this post. Verizon is touting that the Droid Mini has all the power of the Droid Ultra, but it’s smaller. Which would be a big difference from the other mini phones out there like the HTC One Mini and Galaxy S4 Mini.

Motorola has added a bunch of software tweaks in this next-generation of Droid’s that are quite cool. Including Touchless Control, Active Display, Quick Capture, Droid Zap, and Droid Command Center. The Active Display, Quick Capture and Touchless Control look to be similar to the features we’ve seen for the Moto X being announced on August 1st. The Droid Mini, Maxx and Ultra all have Ingress pre-loaded. Which make them the first devices to come with Ingress pre-installed. Not a bad piece of bloat in my opinion.

The Droid Mini is going on sale for $99 and you can pre-order now. The Droid Mini will be available on August 20th from your local Verizon Wireless store or retailer. Verizon is also throwing in 6-months free of Google Music All Access if you purchase one of the new Droids by September 30th.

As for the specs, we’re looking at a Motorola-branded 8-core processor system on a chip. Yes that’s right an Octa-core processor in a mini phone. It’s being called the X8. Verizon is claiming the processor will be 24% faster while the GPU is 100% faster. Which is pretty nice considering the old generation was running Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 processor. Also the virtual or software buttons are now gone. It’s all capacitive on this series of Droid’s from Motorola. Which is actually quite surprising. The Droid Mini is made of Kevlar and glass and looks pretty nice.

How many of you are rushing to pre-order your Droid Mini now? Let us know in the comments below.